Two Covfefe To Go

Six minutes after midnight on May 31, 2017.

Do you remember where you were when it happened?

You don't want a phone call at that time of night. It's never good news. Same goes with a tweet from a President. Most people are asleep. A good time to press the big red button for a nuclear war.

A tweet splutters:

"Despite the constant negative press covfefe."

The next morning.

Six o'clock and nine minutes, May 31, 2017:

"Who can figure out the true meaning of 'covfefe'??? Enjoy!"

There's a swift delete of his original tweet. But wait. It's a joke?

If it was intentional, as he implied, then what did he mean? Twitter lapped it up. Plenty of fodder for social media to meme it out for the lols.

There's a question we kept asking ourselves. For the past four years, watching from the other side of the Ocean.

What did it all mean? For the first time we could see inside power's head via twitter. It was a great distraction.

What does it mean?

Did the President mean "coffee" instead of "covfefe"?

Well, that's the definition my local coffee shop ran with. Before the world could find out what it meant, it was already on the café's blackboard.

Every morning for a year, I ordered a short black covfefe. I needed my covfefe strong in the morning. I became glued to watching late-night news. It's the early morning in Washington D.C. The daily antics like a 24-hour reality TV show we could not shut off. What would happen next?

I don't want to know. I want to know. Do I need to know?

But was there any point in trying to dig deeper into the meaning?

It meant nothing. It meant everything. It could be the end of the world.

It's covfefe.

Little did we know, a few years later, there was to be a tiny, very tiny, microscopic glitch. It was more bigly than a typo from a President. And more deadly: The virus.

Trust a pandemic to upend the good times. It's hard to be popular when a virus starts picking out people in your family to take with it. When you are out of a job. When you are sweating through long shifts working in intensive care.

I don't go on Twitter as much anymore. The political fighting has made it too toxic for me every day. Anyway, it's become less about conversation and more about broadcasting. I couldn't unsee what I saw.

Even though he's now not on Twitter, I don't know whether I will go back to how I once used it.

The politics of envy

Too much throwing the toys out of the pram. Too many tantrums by baby boomers who only remind you of the worst excesses of their generation. Who had it all. The best of the Earth's climate. Lucky them.

It's the politics of envy, but I am not envious. To be jealous, I would have to want the same things.

All I've learned is how much time I wasted on watching politics over the past four years. Much like Twitter itself, will you remember any of these tweets? I don't remember all those arguments below the line. They blow over. It's like writing on water. And about as large as confetti.

Or covfefe.

Some commentators say politics and entertainment are now forever entwined. If politics is entertainment, then I'd like another option. Your distractions no longer work on me.

It's a job we vote you in; we vote you out. That's about it. Technical. Bureaucratic. We lose sometimes, and sometimes we win.

The Mending Wall

Could we have wanted a wall, after all?

Not like the Mending Wall poem by the great American poet, Robert Frost, where we learn at school:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

This wall has been built up over the past few years. It's a wall built up within us. The wall in our hearts. Now we are all more explicit about what we stand for.

Whatever that means for you.

Whatever.

What did any of it mean?

As Melania's jacket from Zara said on the back of it:

I don't care, do you?

Tremendous.

That'll be two covfefes to go.